A/N: Once again, thank you so much to everyone who is reading this story! Unfortunately, because of the insane amount of schoolwork I have this week I am not going to be able to update again until Friday. I just wanted to let you guys know since I have so far been giving you daily chapters. J91 asked me in the reviews whether or not I have completed the story yet and the answer is no. I have just always been a few chapters ahead of the uploaded chapters which is how I have been able to stay on top of everything and update so regularly. Hopefully on Friday I will be able to continue with the daily updates. This chapter seemed the natural spot for a little bit of a hiatus. I hope it tides you over until Friday. Enjoy!

Chapter 14

Éponine pushed open the apartment door and found Enjolras doing work at his desk. She noticed he looked very frazzled, and there were papers strewn all around him. Éponine frowned, it was unusual to see him this disorganized. He looked up when he heard the door close.

"Éponine thank god you are here! There is so much to do, I can't believe I didn't get started on this earlier!" Enjolras exclaimed, running his hands through his hair.

Éponine frowned, wondering if he had some big paper to write or a test. She put down her bags on the table. "What exactly are you talking about?"

"The baby Éponine! There's so much to do, arghh I should have started months ago." He sat down again and began pulling papers towards him.

"Enjolras, the baby didn't exist months ago... are you alright?"

Enjolras was now mumbling incoherently to himself as he began to scribble things down. Éponine thought she recognized a few of his patented color-coded pros and cons lists.

"No I'm not alright! There is so much to do. We need a crib and a stroller and baby clothes and a room for the baby and what color are we going to paint the nursery? We don't know the sex of the baby yet! And we need to baby-proof the apartment or both apartments, are we going to be living together? I don't want the baby in your apartment there is a weird mold growing on your shower curtain; I don't even think you should be living there. I tried cleaning it with bleach once and I think it grew more, how is that possible Éponine? What kind of mutant mold is growing on your shower curtain?" he yelled with a flourish of his hands.

She wanted to comment on his weird behavior, but felt compelled to defend the state of her bathroom first. "Hey, that mold adds to the charm of my apartment. Does anyone else have mold on their shower curtain that changes color depending on the weather? I know when it's going to rain before the meteorologists do! And Joly thinks it might have medicinal qualities. Remember that time that Marius touched it by accident and all the freckles on his left arm disappeared for two days?" Éponine stopped talking when she realized that Enjolras was not listening to her, he was too busy making what looked to be a very extensive bar graph by hand using colored pencils.

It suddenly occurred to Éponine what was wrong. She had seen this kind of behavior from him before, though perhaps not to this extent. "Enjolras, are you drunk?"

Enjolras looked guilty. "No, I don't know. Maybe. Possibly. Probably. What is drunk anyway? Who are we to decide what drunk means? You know how I feel about labels Éponine. Just because I drank some beer and did a few shots and got us all kicked out of the bar does not mean you can label me as 'drunk'. I have a name you know, it is Sebastian Emmanuel Enjolras!" he finished with a triumphant grin on his face, as if he had made a moving speech. He picked up his colored pencils and began working on his graph again.

Éponine didn't know whether to laugh or groan. Some people were emotional drunks, others were fun drunks, some were sad drunks. Enjolras on the other hand was an organized drunk.

Most people didn't believe it until they saw it. That night he had cleaned her shower curtain had been at a party. He had found rubber gloves in her cabinet and gone through her entire apartment cleaning everything while everyone else danced and had fun. She had found him passed out in her bathtub the next day with an empty bottle of bleach and when she had woken him up he had only muttered, "It won't come off, why won't it come off?" He had once organized all of Jean Prouvaire's movies and books according to the Dewey Decimal System and on a separate occasion pulled up all of the weeds in Feuilly's backyard by hand. It had gotten to the point where people sometimes got him drunk on purpose so that he could do their housework. The only problem was that they could not control what he would try to organize. Éponine winced when she remembered how Enjolras had once tried to rearrange Cosette's underwear drawer by color and type of fabric. Luckily she had found him before Marius did and was able to undo the damage.

It seemed that right now he was trying to organize everything to do with the baby. Éponine was touched but also a little concerned, he might have bitten off more than he could chew this time. She tried to distract him with conversation.

"So why did you get kicked out of the bar?"

"I went behind the counter and tried to organize all of the alcohol by country of origin. Apparently the bartender didn't appreciate it." Enjolras muttered as he started working on another list. "What is your opinion on breastfeeding?" he said very seriously.

Éponine couldn't help but giggle at that.

"Éponine this is serious, I need to figure this out now. We only have a few months left and I can't screw this up," Enjolras said in a frustrated voice.

Éponine realized that this might not just be the drunken part of Enjolras talking anymore.

She walked into the kitchen and returned with a glass of water. She handed it to him. "You know Sebastian, this is not a book collection or an underwear drawer." She saw Enjolras blush a little. "This is the rest of our lives and you can't just figure it all out in one night. It's like you said to me when I told you I wanted to keep the baby. We'll figure this out, together. But it's going to take some time." Enjolras looked like he had sobered up a bit. He drank the water she had given him.

"You're right, I'm sorry. I just feel so unprepared right now and I want everything to be perfect for you and the baby."

"You mean for the three of us together," Éponine replied. Enjolras smiled but also looked a little confused.

Éponine thought about just telling him her feelings right then. But while she had made a lot of excuses the past few days, it probably truly wasn't a good idea to share her feelings with him while he was drunk. She felt a little disappointed.

"How about we clean up this mess and watch a movie or something until you calm down?" Éponine suggested. The only way to get Enjolras to stop drunk-organizing was to distract him.

Enjolras smiled. "I have the perfect movie," he jumped up and went into the kitchen. When he returned he handed her a DVD with a big grin on his face. Éponine laughed when she realized it was a movie called The Blob from 1958. She read out the description on the back, "'An alien lifeform consumes everything in its path as it grows and grows.' Hmm that sounds strangely accurate."

Enjolras laughed. "Combeferre gave that to me tonight, he called it an early godfather present. Oh I forgot, I was also supposed to give you this note." He pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket.

He started reading out the note in a pretty accurate impression of Combeferre's smooth, calming voice. "My dearest Éponine, I am truly sorry to leave you with this drunk, over-organized version of Enjolras but I have a huge paper due tomorrow and the rest of the Amis are too drunk to stay with him. I can only hope he will be of some use to you. Perhaps you can take him back to your apartment so he can get that mold off of your shower curtain? Good luck."

Éponine scoffed. "Why is everyone so obsessed with my shower curtain?" She mumbled to herself. A thought occurred to her. "How did they manage to get you so drunk on a school night anyway?"

Enjolras looked confused. "I'm not really sure... My beer bottle just never seemed to empty and then after a while doing shots suddenly seemed like a good idea to me."

Éponine giggled as she put the movie in. "You realize Grantaire probably kept refilling your beer while you weren't looking right?"

"Oh, that must be why he was hovering around me the entire night." Enjolras looked a little angry.

"Do you want me to release the video on him?" she asked with a smile on her face.

"No," he answered with an evil glint in his eyes. "I think we should save that for later. Besides, I like being able to lord it over him."

Éponine smiled as she sat down next to him on the couch. Maybe I've been a bad influence, she thought. She shrugged to herself and sat down next to him as the title screen came onto the TV.

By the time the credits started to roll Enjolras and Éponine had migrated towards each other. It had started innocently enough. About ten minutes into the movie Éponine had felt tired and leaned her head against Enjolras' shoulder. He shifted and put his arm around her, his hand at her waist. She found that she wasn't so tired anymore. She rested her hand on his chest. She could feel his muscles tighten as she did so. A few minutes later her breath hitched as she felt his hand on the bare skin at her hip where her shirt had ridden up. She had to bite her tongue to stop from gasping when he started drawing lazy patterns on her bare skin with his fingers. Éponine wondered how it was possible to be so comfortable yet feel so much tension at the same time.

Enjolras was having a similar problem. It was as if Éponine was invading his senses. She smelled like lavender, which he knew was from the shampoo that had mysteriously appeared in his shower a few weeks ago. Her hair was tickling his cheek but he didn't mind. She shifted and he felt her breasts press closer to his side. He realized that he was now breathing rather heavily. The hazy cloud that the alcohol had placed over his mind had long since disappeared and he felt highly alert, his mind clear. He wondered if he was having the same effect on her that she was having on him. He knew he shouldn't, yet he couldn't help but touch the skin at her waist. He heard her sharp intake of breath. He began to draw patterns with his fingertips. He could feel the tension he was creating in her body, he was having the same sensation as well.

They might as well have been watching static. Éponine could barely tell if the characters were speaking English. When the movie ended they hardly acknowledged it. They stayed in their positions, neither one breaking their silence.

Enjolras cleared his throat softly and Éponine lifted her head slightly so she was looking up at him. They caught each other's eyes. "Maybe we should go to bed," he said huskily, his voice low.

"I'm not tired," Éponine said. She spoke so softly that if it weren't for their close proximity he never would have heard her. They stared into each other's eyes, neither daring to move. After a few moments Éponine slowly reached up a hand and rested it on his cheek. He leaned into her touch.

"Éponine... I..." he trailed off as her fingers grazed his lips. She lifted her head up and softly pressed her lips to his. He responded almost immediately. It was slower than the last time but somehow felt more intimate. Éponine turned around so that she was practically sitting in his lap. His hands were moving up and down her back while her arms were around his neck, her fingers in his hair. After a few minutes they pulled away from each other's lips but stayed in their embrace, resting their foreheads together.

Enjolras sighed. "Éponine..." he started.

"No wait," she said. "Let me talk first." She knew the moment had finally come. She pulled back and looked him in the eyes. "Last week, when you told me how you felt about me," Enjolras winced at the memory. "I didn't answer because I was scared, but it wasn't because I loved Marius." Enjolras looked surprised. "I haven't been in love with him for a while now. In fact I think I was more in love with the idea of Marius than anything else. He was the first nice person I really connected with when I got here and I kind of saw him as this vision of a better life for myself. But I was never really in love with him. Because how I saw Marius, as this flawless person, that's not even who Marius really is." Éponine stopped to take a breath.

"I think it was easy for me to love someone who wasn't really there, who could never love me back. And then you came along, or I guess you always were there. And just being with you, just talking or touching or joking around, it felt right. And you were kind and intelligent and passionate and sweet and amazing. And at the same time you were stubborn and a compulsive over-organizer and stressed out over the tiniest details, but I loved those parts of you just as much as the other parts. It's what made you a real person. And we created this little world together that only we knew about. And although I was terrified about the future, with you I felt like everything would turn out okay. And I started to feel so strongly for you. It crept up on me so slowly that I didn't even realize what I was feeling. And then you were standing in front of me, saying all of these wonderful things, and I believed you. And that scared me," Éponine said softly. She looked down and blushed. She was embarrassed about how insecure she could be. When she glanced back up Enjolras was looking deeply into her eyes, patiently waiting for her to continue. "I believed you when you said you wanted to be with me, but I didn't really understand why. No one has ever said things like that to me, or at least they never meant it. And I felt like it could never last, because eventually you'd get tired of me. Everyone always does." Éponine practically whispered. Enjolras looked a little sad at her words.

"Before I collapsed at the café, I realized how silly I was being. That I couldn't hide from my feelings just because they frightened me, that I didn't want to. And I've been trying to tell you how I felt the past few days, but there was this part of me that was terrified that you wouldn't feel the same way. That you changed your mind." Enjolras was staring at her with wide eyes, hanging on her every word. She knew there was no going back. "But Cosette said something to me today. She said that maybe the important thing was that I trusted you, that I trusted in your feelings for me. So that is what I am doing, because I do trust you Sebastian. I have never felt this strongly before about anyone, and I don't think I ever will. I want to be with you. I want us to be together. And so I am trusting you with my heart, I am trusting that you won't break it." Éponine finished. She had a nervous fluttering in her stomach.

Éponine felt exposed, like she had just given everything she had to him. Yet she also felt strangely calm. She felt safe in his arms, like nothing could go wrong. Enjolras smiled widely and placed his hand on her cheek. He pulled her in for a soft kiss, and she could tell from the feel of his lips on hers that he felt the same way. Her heart was pounding so hard that she was sure he could feel it too. He pulled away after a few seconds and met her eyes. He brushed some of the hair from her face tenderly.

"You can trust me Éponine, but you shouldn't feel that way about yourself," he said sincerely. "You are remarkable, and I don't know why you can't see it. Everything in your life you have accomplished on your own, without help. You could have ended up like your parents but you chose a better life for yourself." Éponine opened her mouth to protest but Enjolras held up his hand.

"I know you have done some bad things in your life, but the point is you didn't let where you came from hold you back. You didn't let it define your life. I know people have told you some terrible things about yourself, but they were wrong. You said you trust me, then trust me when I tell you this. You deserve everything you have, and more. There are a million reasons why I want to be with you. You have a kind heart but you aren't afraid to stand up for yourself. You are funny and witty and so smart, but you don't flaunt it like some people do. You are the only one I know who is more stubborn than I am, and the only one who can make me fear for my life with a single look. You are so strong. Definitely stronger than I am. And you are beautiful, both inside and out. I don't think I could ever get tired of you, if anything you will get tired of me. You are worthy of everything Éponine, you are worthy of love and you are worthy of happiness. Anyone who tells you differently doesn't deserve you. I don't even know if I deserve you. But if you're willing to have me, then I'll try to."

Éponine could feel tears on her cheeks. A small part of her told her not to believe him, but just by looking into his eyes she knew he meant every word. She hugged Enjolras tightly. She breathed in deeply and smiled. He smelled like home.

There was silence as they just held each other.

After a few moments, Éponine spoke up, her voice a little raw from crying. "I feel like you kind of hijacked my speech," she said softly.

Enjolras laughed lightly. Éponine felt his warm breath blow her hair slightly.

He pulled back and wiped away the tears that were drying on her cheeks. "So we are really doing this?" he asked softly. His eyes looked hesitant, as if he was afraid she would change her mind. She realized maybe she wasn't the only one with insecurities.

She kissed him softly. "Yes, I think we are," she replied confidently.

Enjolras smiled widely, his own dimples showing this time. He kissed her again. Éponine felt like she was floating. She felt his strong hands on her back, his lips moving against hers. She was so happy, but it was a different sort of happiness than she had ever felt before. She felt like she mattered. She felt loved. She realized they had not exchanged those three little words, but found that it didn't matter right now. She knew that she loved him, and she knew that he loved her back. For once in her life, she didn't need the proof right in front of her to know that it was true.

He moved his lips to her neck. She curled her toes in ecstasy at the contact. She struggled to form the words she wanted to say to him.

"Thank you," she breathed out.

He pulled himself back and looked her in the eyes. His eyes were cloudy with desire.

"For what?" he asked in a husky voice.

"For not giving up on me. For waiting all this time for me to figure out what should have been clear to me weeks ago. Maybe even years ago." Éponine said softly.

Enjolras smiled. "It was worth it." He put his hand on the side of her face, stroking her cheek with his thumb. He looked her straight in the eyes, suddenly looking very serious. He spoke almost in a whisper, "You are worth it."

He kissed her gently, softly. Soon their lips picked up pace. Éponine felt like she could stay here forever, but at the same time she was hungry for more. She could feel that he was too. She peeled off his shirt slowly, enjoying how frustrated he becoming at being away from her lips for so long.

He responded by pulling her shirt off equally as slowly, making sure to touch as much of her skin as possible as he did so. After an eternity the shirt was over her head and their lips crashed together once more. His hands moved to her back, his fingers skimming the outline of her bra.

Éponine reached back and unhooked it herself, not wanting to wait for him to figure out the tricky clasp.

His eyes grew wide and his gaze moved up and down her body as her bra slipped to the ground. His eyes were so dark with desire that she could barely see the blue of his irises. She placed his hand on her body as his lips met hers once again. After that it wasn't long before Enjolras picked her up and carried her to the bedroom. This time when she reached for the zipper on his jeans, he didn't stop her.

It was nothing like she had ever experienced before. It wasn't rushed and rough like when she had been with Montparnasse. It wasn't a blur of tangled limbs like her first time with Enjolras had been. It wasn't even like that night in the café.

It was the best parts of those moments combined, and yet so much more. It was as if they could not be close enough or feel enough of each other. It was passionate yet also caring and gentle, as if they had all the time in the world. Yet most of all, it was loving. They could feel the love radiating off each other's skin. She felt it within his touch. He saw it within her smile.

When it was over they lay in each other's embrace, their bodies tired but their minds wide awake. They both realized that they had reached a certain point. Like they had been climbing a mountain for years and had just reached the peak. They had no way to climb back down without falling, and neither of them knew what to do now that they had finished climbing. But for now they were content to just sit at the top, enjoying the view together.